House Democrats Press Ahead with War Funding Vote

Overwhelming Democratic Party support for military and war allocations in Congress is not a function of them being wimps, who are secretly anti-war, but forced to be pubic hawks by those wily Republicans.

No, those consistent, overwhelming, pro-military votes and posturing represent the true views of the organized Democratic Party, in sharp contrast to the party's dovish voters. This is why nearly all House and Senate Democrats are true t0 their party's history, which is initiation or support for one foreign war after another for all of the 20th Century, and so far into the 21st. They lead the US government into WWI, the war to end all wars. Later they took the US into the Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War, Bay of Pigs, and other small wars, such as the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Kosovo.

As anyone can see, there is not much evidence here of secret peaceniks among the party's think tanks, operatives, elected official, and financiers. In fact, there is enormous evidence to the contrary, that the party's elected officials consistently vote for overall military spending, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, because they simply believe it in.

Red Eye

House Democrats press ahead with Thursday vote on war funding bill

ANDREW TAYLOR, AP News,May 07, 2008 15:27 EST

House leaders on Wednesday worked to rally rank-and-file Democrats behind a $195 billion measure to pay for the war in Iraq through next spring and provide education help to veterans as well as relief for the jobless.

Democratic leaders still planned to bring the bill to a vote on Thursday, as Republicans acknowledged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had devised a strategy to try to jam the bill past Republicans and President Bush in a form that he might have to sign.

Pelosi's strategy relies on keeping the measure free of many domestic add-ons that have provoked a Bush veto threat — except for a politically popular extension of unemployment benefits and an even more popular increase in education benefits for troops returning from Iraq.

Republicans acknowledged privately that Pelosi's plan to send Bush a bill clean of too many Democratic add-ons — and ultimately shorn of language setting a nonbinding timeline to remove combat troops from Iraq — would be difficult for Bush to stop.

"That's going to be really hard for the White House to push back on," said a former White House aide.

First, however, Pelosi must overcome a rebellion by moderate to conservative Democrats, who are upset that the war funding bill is carrying new benefit programs — especially the boost in GI education benefits — without paying for them with offsetting cuts to other programs.

The revolt among these "Blue Dog" Democrats kept House leaders from officially releasing the measure Wednesday in advance of Thursday's planned vote.

Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and fellow Democrats on the panel revealed a far more ambitious list of domestic add-ons to the war funding measure.

The additional money in the Senate includes $10.4 billion for continuing recovery efforts from Hurricane Katrina, almost double Bush's request. There's also $490 million in crime-fighting grants to state and local governments, $451 million to repair roads and bridges damaged by natural disasters, $450 million to combat western wildfires and $400 million for rural counties suffering from cutbacks in timber-related revenues.

Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., touted an additional $1.3 billion in international food aid, while Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, obtained $400 million more for National Institutes of Health research programs.

The Senate add-ons run squarely into a Bush veto threat and are likely to be rejected by Pelosi as well.

Pelosi's plan is to advance the war funding bill in an unusual process where it is broken into three separate pieces for votes in the House and Senate: war funding, anti-war policy provisions and domestic funding.

The idea is to allow anti-war Democrats to vote against the war funding — which Republicans will provide the votes to pass — while still ensuring the money goes out to support troops overseas. Democrats get to vote for restrictions on the war, but the provisions would never make it through the Senate to face a veto.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday at the White House, Bush tried to rally support among House Republicans in his opposition to the Democratic war bill.

According to an official who attended, but was not authorized to speak on the record on the meeting, Bush said extending unemployment insurance at a time when unemployment was low was unprecedented. He also said he is open to expanding college aid for military veterans but preferred to deal with it in a separate bill.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who accompanied Bush in the early part of the meeting, told House Republicans that he would stand strong against any spending in the supplemental unrelated to the troops. "If you stick with us, we'll stick with you," he told the group.

But Democrats say Republicans would be foolish to support so much money for an unpopular war without addressing economic troubles at home.

"The American people are puzzled, perplexed and I think angry" that money is going toward Iraq when there are still emergencies inside the United States, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., told reporters.